Liquid glass. It is an umbrella term for changes in interface across virtually all the Apple platform, but it is also evocative of an intangible thing; Digital, transparent, amorf glass that slides, bends and responds to touch in a way that real glass could never do.
Just hours after Apple revealed, on WWDC 2025, the biggest change to iOS page IOS set up 7 13 years ago, together with Tom’s Global Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer, with Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi and Apple Global VP for Marketing Greg Joswiak to talk about all the company, Vice President during its 90-minute.
We talked about Siri, Apple Intelligence and iPados’ remarkable transformation, but it was when we asked about inspiration for Liquid Glass that the couple was most animated.
FEDERIGHI first confirmed what the rumors have hinted for months: that the toddler-aged Visionos running on Apple’s $ 3,500 mixed reality-vision pro-headset was where it all started.
(Image Credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
“So I would say that the most obvious inspiration is Visionos using glass and you say, ‘Well, why used Visiono’s glass? Well, glass is a material that allows interfaces to sit in context, in this case of a space and feels like chrome [or frame] – That is, the glass – consumes somehow kind of less space. It allows more of the context to get through. It was very powerful in the concept of visionos “.
However, I had a hard time believing that this still new platform could be the full inspiration for Liquid Glass, a design approach set to appear in iOS 26, iPados 26, Macos Tahoe, TVOS 26 and Watchos 26. I asked Federighi if they looked at Visionos, and Lightbulb went out or if there were other, older influences. It turns out that Apple’s occupation of glassy interfaces goes back at least one dozen years.
Through the appearance glass
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(Image Credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
(Image Credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
“If you look back on even iOS, 7, we would have started working with transparent materials, and then you saw yourself in MacOS Yosemite, the sidebar and the windows began to have this kind of transparency,” he says. “So there was already a glass of glass that was finding its way as building block material for interfaces.”
Federighi also revealed the extent of the real world test that went to develop the eerie realistic appearance and responsiveness of liquid glass. “There [are these] Designed rooms. You know they bring […] In different glass pieces with different opacities, different lens, it is quite interesting. ”.
He added that Apple has an industrial design study that has the ability to produce almost everything. “There were definitely real material studies that were performed there.”
The efforts to simulate real glass and its optical properties were extensive, but then liquid glass also does things that no real glass can do, like changing shape when you touch or move it. But it goes deeper than that.
“We found that because of the incredible diversity of content you have on your device – you roll through a feed and it is all white, and then suddenly there is a dark sky image that comes and rolls under the glass – but you want the glass to respond in a way that a clear piece of light glass would.
Suddenly the black thing comes in and you can’t read any of your text or it looks bad. We were able to build adaptive glass that changes the way it transmits color, which can even turn from a dark glass to a light glass of adaptive by understanding what lies behind it. So you know it will now be this incredibly moldable material that always fits into what is below it. “
Soon come back for a link to Techradar and Tom’s Guide Podcast with the full interview with Federighi and Joswiak.
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